A society in transition

"I have always believed that there was some divine plan
that placed this great continent between two oceans to be
sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love
of freedom and a special kind of courage."

-- California Governor Ronald Reagan, 1974

Shifts in the structure of American society, begun years or
even decades earlier, had become apparent by the time the
1980s arrived. The composition of the population and the
most important jobs and skills in American society had
undergone major changes.

The dominance of service jobs in the economy became
undeniable. By the mid-1980s, nearly three-fourths of all
employees worked in the service sector, for instance, as
retail clerks, office workers, teachers, physicians, and
government employees.

Service-sector activity benefited from the availability and
increased use of the computer. The information age arrived,
with hardware and software that could aggregate previously
unimagined amounts of data about economic and social
trends. The federal government had made significant
investments in computer technology in the 1950s and 1960s
for its military and space programs.

In 1976, two young California entrepreneurs, working out of
a garage, assembled the first widely marketed computer for
home use, named it the Apple, and ignited a revolution. By
the early 1980s, millions of microcomputers had found their
way into U.S. businesses and homes, and in 1982, Time
magazine dubbed the computer its "Machine of the Year."

Meanwhile, America's "smokestack industries" were in
decline. The U.S. automobile industry reeled under
competition from highly efficient Japanese carmakers. By
1980 Japanese companies already manufactured a fifth of the
vehicles sold in the United States. American manufacturers
struggled with some success to match the cost efficiencies
and engineering standards of their Japanese rivals, but
their former dominance of the domestic car market was gone
forever. The giant old-line steel companies shrank to
relative insignificance as foreign steel makers adopted new
technologies more readily.

Consumers were the beneficiaries of this ferocious
competition in the manufacturing industries, but the
painful struggle to cut costs meant the permanent loss of
hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs. Those who could
made the switch to the service sector; others became
unfortunate statistics.

Population patterns shifted as well. After the end of the
postwar "baby boom" (1946 to 1964), the overall rate of
population growth declined and the population grew older.
Household composition also changed. In 1980 the percentage
of family households dropped; a quarter of all groups were
now classified as "nonfamily households," in which two or
more unrelated persons lived together.

New immigrants changed the character of American society in
other ways. The 1965 reform in immigration policy shifted
the focus away from Western Europe, facilitating a dramatic
increase in new arrivals from Asia and Latin America. In
1980, 808,000 immigrants arrived, the highest number in 60
years, as the country once more became a haven for people
from around the world.

Additional groups became active participants in the
struggle for equal opportunity. Homosexuals, using the
tactics and rhetoric of the civil rights movement, depicted
themselves as an oppressed group seeking recognition of
basic rights. In 1975, the U.S. Civil Service Commission
lifted its ban on employment of homosexuals. Many states
enacted anti-discrimination laws.

Then, in 1981, came the discovery of AIDS (Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome). Transmitted sexually or through blood
transfusions, it struck homosexual men and intravenous drug
users with particular virulence, although the general
population proved vulnerable as well. By 1992, over 220,000
Americans had died of AIDS. The AIDS epidemic has by no
means been limited to the United States, and the effort to
treat the disease now encompasses physicians and medical
researchers throughout the world.